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I have just moved my home office, which meant I packed and re-shelved boxes and boxes of books. I was able to part with a few boxes, donating them to good homes where they will be well used. But I still have hundreds more that I couldn’t find the strength to give away. I might need them tomorrow or next week, you know. And there is that emotional connection. These books are who I am, and who I might become, if I just read them again and again. 

Of course, not everyone feels that connection to the printed text. The debate about the future of the book goes on . . . Here is an intriguing essay about that by Annie Murphy Paul, a journalist and consultant I’m following these days, “Are Readers an Endangered Species?”

Recently Glenda Eoyang, Human Systems Dynamics Institute added a tag line to her e-mail messages:

If at first you don’t succeed, iterate and iterate again!

That’s good advice, no matter who we are or what challenges we face.

Human systems are infinitely complex. They are continually in motion. They are diverse. They are open to influences from the environment, which is also infinitely complex, changing, diverse, and open.

We cannot predict what any individual will do in a particular situation, but we can note patterns over time. We can analyze what is happening, and we can make judgements about what our next most promising step might be. We can try it out; watch how the system shifts; and then take another step. This cycle is iterative, and the only way we can move productively within a changing system is to iterate. And iterate again and again.

Glenda Eoyang and her colleagues are developing a field within complexity science she calls “human systems dynamics.” A central model or method within that field is an inquiry/reflection/action cycle that facilitates this kind of iteration. She calls it Adaptive Action. Adaptive Action is and inquiry/action cycle framed by three questions:

• What is happening?
• So what does it mean?
• Now what shall we do?

For a deep dive into that concept, see Adaptive Action: Leveraging Uncertainty in your Organization.

The “problem” with this approach is that mistakes (failure) are a necessary part of this process. In each iteration, we make mistakes, learn what might work better, so that we can move forward into a new iteration.

When we want to make a long-lasting difference in our work, we have to take action. But we also have to be patient–iterating over and over again–as we try to adapt to the unpredictability of this world.

Readings

• Eoyang, G. H. and Holladay, R. (2013). Adaptive Action: Leveraging uncertainty in your organization. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Patterson, L., Holladay, R., and Eoyang, G. (2013). Radical Rules for Schools: Adaptive Action for complex change. Circle Pines, MN: Human Systems Dynamics Institute Press.

Most high school teachers I’ve talked with lately are working hard to help their English learners achieve academic success. With so many aspects of students’ lives beyond our control, how can we make a difference for these young adults? My last post introduced three big questions that can set systemic conditions for large and small changes:

• Who are we and what are we about?
• What differences make the biggest difference to our work?
• How do we do that work together?

Here, I’m describing one example of how a small group of high school teachers is using those three questions as they focus on how to teach writing, especially to English learners.

I have been privileged to work with these teachers since 2007, when we were funded by National Writing Project’s Local Sites Research Initiative, to investigate how to best support adolescent English learners’ academic writing achievement. After a five-day summer institute sponsored by North Star of Texas Writing Project in 2008, the teachers went back to their classrooms to see how they could adapt and modify what they learned in response to their students. They met throughout the year to reflect on the year and to synthesize what they had learned.

Our Findings

To be honest, after that first year, we had more questions than answers. With additional funding, we have continued our exploration, inviting new teachers into the network. Over the years, our network has included about 30 people—teachers in middle and high schools and university educators. The list of articles below chronicles some of our findings.  If you want to get to know our work better, follow us on the Literacy in Learning Exchange—North Star Culturally Mediated Writing Instruction and on Facebook.

We have learned that powerful support for English learners can’t be reduced to five steps or to a list of instructional strategies.

• It is about setting conditions that invite students to ask important questions about writing and about the world.
• It’s about building on everything that students bring to the classroom—their cultures, their interests, their use of multiple technologies.
• It’s about knowing when to step in to guide students when an explicit lesson is needed, and it’s about stepping back and giving students space to explore when they need that.
• It’s about learning how to have significant conversations about writing and learning.
• Most of all, it’s about inviting students to join us in an inquiry stance about the world, to search for answers, and to tell the stories of our inquiries.  We use Adaptive Action (Eoyang and Holladay, 2013) as a framework for this inquiry with our students and our colleagues.

Each year since then we have continued this inquiry, and we have come to understand something of the complexity of this kind of powerful instruction. We have begun to call the patterns we want to see in our classrooms “generative teaching and learning.”  “Generative” suggests creativity, adaptation, and transformation. It describes what most teachers and researchers and school reformers see as “best practice.”  It is consistent with project-based learning, with writing workshop, and with other interactive, learner-centered approaches to instruction. But it is difficult to describe or explain in a formula or program that might be implemented across a campus or district.  In fact, once it becomes a formula, it is no longer “generative.”

Here is our most important finding:  A knowledgeable, thoughtful, responsive, and adaptive teacher is essential to generative learning.

Our Plans for a Book

Our focus now is to write about what we have learned. We met one Sunday evening not long ago to talk about how we might put what we have learned into a practical book for teachers. As we talked about our hopes for this book, we realized that the “three big questions” (which we had used now and then throughout our time together) might capture our vision for the book. In this conversation, we realized that our goal is to capture the complexity of teachers’ decision-making in particular contexts, in response to particular students at a particular time. .

This graphic represents our “radical inquiry”—how the three big questions set conditions for our work. (See the explanation of Radical Inquiry at the Human Systems Dynamics Institute website.)

As we have worked with more and more students over the years, our answers to these questions have evolved.  The arrows suggest that our answers to these three questions come together in a complex dynamic that influences how learning self-organizes into a generative pattern. These questions point to “simple rules” that can create the patterns we want to see. Here is how we are currently answering these questions:

Who are we and what is our Work?

• We are teachers and learners.
• We are readers and writers.
• We are change agents.

• Empathy and responsiveness
• Inquiry
• Authenticity
• Social and cultural capital
• Knowledge (about language, literacy, and the world)
• System coherence (similarities across the whole, part, and greater whole)

• Adaptive Action
• Dialogue (writing and speaking)
• Mediation and modeling
• Multiple modes, media, and genre.

We suggest that teachers begin with inquiry and encourage students to investigate problems, generate questions, and then read and writing to explore those questions. Structures like project-based learning and writing workshops can provide essential support for our approach. We also recommend particular practices—writer’s notebooks, mentor texts, quick writes, class discussions, anchor charts, graphic organizers, and more.

When people ask us how to teach students to write, we have to answer, “It depends.”  It depends on the context, the purpose, the students, the resources, and the teacher. We have found, however, that it also depends on our deep beliefs and principles. We are more clear about those beliefs and principles because we have asked one another these three big questions again and again. With each iteration, we have been able to consider more data and more stories from our classrooms to help us answer the questions, questions which help us articulate our beliefs and principles. As we try to enact the answers to these questions, our decisions create particular patterns across time—patterns that have a better chance of making a powerful difference for students.

Teaching writing to anyone (especially adolescent English learners) is a complex business. We can’t control or predict how one student will respond to a particular lesson. But we can use these three questions to set conditions that make powerful literacy learning more likely.

Further Reading

Eoyang, G. H. and Holladay, R. (2013). Adaptive Action: Leveraging uncertainty in your organization. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Patterson, L, Wickstrom, C., and Araujo, J. (2011). Culturally mediated writing instruction for adolescent English language learners. Research Report of the National Writing Project. http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3621

Wickstrom, C., Patterson, L., and Isgitt, J. (2012). One teacher’s implementation of Culturally Medited Writing Instruction. 61st Yearbook of the Literacy Research Association. Oak Creek, WI: Literacy Research Association, Inc.

Wickstrom, C., Araujo, J., Patterson, L., (with Hoki, C., & Roberts, J.). (2011). I can see you, therefore I can teach. In Dunston, P., Gambrell, K. H., Stecker, P., Fullerton, S., Gillis, V., & Bates, C. C. (Eds.), 60^th Literacy Research Association Yearbook, (pp. 144-157), Oak Creek, WI: Literacy Research Association.

Patterson, L., Wickstrom, C., Roberts, J., Araujo, J., & Hoki, C. (2010). Deciding when to step in and when to back off. The Tapestry Journal, 2, 1, 1-18. http://tapestry.usf.edu/journal/v02n01.php

In human systems, uncertainty is our most constant companion. It is, in fact, our friend. To influence human systems (like learning in classrooms and schools), we have to expect things to be uncertain, unpredictable, surprising, and sometimes confusing.  That is the way things are.  The only constant is change, and the only sure thing is surprise.

So how do we cope?  How do we have any sense of influence over these unpredictable realities?  Eoyang and Holladay (see reference below) say that we must embrace uncertainty. We must “leverage uncertainty” so that we can see options for action and set conditions for positive change. How do we do that?  They recommend Adaptive Action–a cycle of observation, reflection, inquiry and action that can help us choose the best next step toward our goal.

• What is happening?
• So what does that mean?
• Now what shall we do next?  Now what are our new questions?

Here’s a blog post from Amanda Goss, on the North Star of Texas group on the Literacy in Learning Exchange, that shows how their inquiry group is using Adaptive Action — and how they are tweaking the language to make it their own:
http://www.literacyinlearningexchange.org/blog/re-visioning-differences-make-difference#comment-275

This inquiry/action cycle is at the heart of responsive teaching, and it should be at the heart of responsive school reform/transformation. This recursive cycle is “simply” a way to talk about teaching and learning that resonates with what many others have said over the years. It would sound familiar to John Dewey, Louise Rosenblatt, and Marie Clay. We have found these questions a simple and powerful way to talk about what can happen when we welcome uncertainty and move forward, even when the path is unclear.

Eoyang, G. H. and Holladay, R. (2013). Adaptive Action: Leveraging uncertainty in your organization. Palo Alton, CA: Stanford University Press.

In HSD, we look for questions and answers that are both TRUE and USEFUL — that combine theory and practice. Janelle Quintans Bence–a high school teacher in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and a North Star of Texas Writing Project Teacher Consultant–has posted this blog that talks about that link between thought and action: 

http://persistentpondering.posterous.com/from-trees-to-webs-transformati…

What do you think?  True?  Useful?

For the last 12 months, I have been on an amazing learning journey with my colleagues at Human Systems Dynamics (HSD) and The Ball Foundation. Together, we have worked with some impressive educators in New Haven Unified School District (CA), to improve learning for all students in their district. We are now looking back on the year, trying to synthesize what we learned. Here’s my most important ah-ha to this point.

Public schools in the U.S. are facing overwhelming challenges. The future does not look good.  To meet those challenges, we must take radical steps, but, contrary to many recent school reforms, the solution may actually be fairly simple. What I’ve learned alongside my colleagues in California this year is this:

Transforming schools is simply about learning. It’s about setting conditions that ensure that everyone learns, individually and together.

We want to see kindergartners dive into new experiences, take risks, make guesses, ask questions, seek patterns, interpret their experiences, and share what they are learning. We want to see 12th graders ask significant questions, observe closely, read deeply, analyze issues thoroughly, draw conclusions, and create compelling reports and essays.  That is precisely  what teachers, educators, parents, and policy makers need to do if we are going to save public schools! There is no silver bullet–no program or policy that will transform schools. Forget  Superman.

It is simply about learning that leads to action–and action that leads to more learning. HSD calls it “Adaptive Action.”

Here is a list of questions educators might ask as they use  Adaptive Action:

What?

• What patterns do we notice in our system (both desirable and undesirable)?
• Where are the significant issues? What are the differences that make a difference? What are the tensions? Where are the questions?  Where are the puzzles and anomalies?

So What?

• So what do these patterns say about our assumptions? our ideologies? our shared goals? our behaviors toward one another? our discourse?
• So what do these tensions and questions mean for our system, for individuals, and for  the greater whole?

Now What?

• Now what options for action might help us set conditions that amplify the patterns we want to see? or diminish the patterns that prove less useful?
• Now what are our new questions?
• And  how can we tell our story to others?

Once we take action, we begin the process again.

Here is what some of our colleagues in that school district said about the power of Adaptive Action. These are teachers, instructional coaches, and administrators who are standing in inquiry, looking at patterns and trying to solve real problems.

The one thing I always have going through my brain is “What? So what? Now what?”  Like what’s going on with my class right now? I even had it happen in the middle of a lesson where you just kind of feel the lesson isn’t going where you wanted it to go so you ask “What’s going on right now? So what can I do right now to change that?”

As a literacy coach, I think the biggest change for me has been just the idea of standing in inquiry and using adaptive action. . . .  I really am now thinking through things and asking those questions.

On my campus, we talk a lot about patterns and how, if we want to see a change, it has to be at all levels. So when you’re bringing a problem to the table, think about the what, so what, now what in terms of different levels because what might be an issue at your grade level, may also be an issue for the Instructional Leadership Team, or with all the elementary principals. So we’re not just looking at the issue at that one level but looking up and down and across the district.              

In my classroom, we were having a problem with partner talking so I sat with the class and I elicited a bunch of things that were happening — patterns that they saw. What are we noticing? It’s a pattern of a lack of respect for your partner so how can we change that? And my students came up with a few things that they wanted to try and change.  Since then it’s been pretty good.  We still have to go back and remind ourselves, but it’s been pretty good.

These educators are showing us what happens when each individual throughout a system begins to focus on students, honestly makes sense of the patterns in the system, and generates options for acting individually and collectively to support student learning.

We are beginning to see the potential for whole system transformation when individuals and groups throughout the system use Adaptive Action–in classrooms, hallways, cafeterias, teacher workrooms, parent conferences, and board meetings–to focus on their most pressing challenges.

When everyone in the system is standing in inquiry, when everyone is learning, the dynamics shift. The system changes in a fundamental way. We simply ask questions, observe and interpret what we see, and, together, look for answers.

Perhaps Adaptive Action  is the “simple” path to saving our public schools.

For more information about Human Systems Dynamics and Adaptive action see http://www.hsdinstitute.org.

–Leslie Patterson

I believe in the power of questions. I believe that questions generate our most creative and important work as human beings. As children, we stack blocks to see how high the tower can grow, and, as diplomats, we gather around a table to discuss the future of our planet. In both of these moments, we stand in inquiry. I believe that, when I stand in inquiry, I can do my best work. More important, at those moments, I become my best self. But what does it mean to stand in inquiry?

It means that I ask honest questions — questions about what I must know as I move forward. My questions are rooted in honest curiosity–not in criticism or frustration or anger. It’s not about posing questions to impress, nor to make a point, but questions to inform each next action, each next step into unknown territory.

It means that I honor the questions that you are asking. It means that I listen to what you are saying but also that I listen for the various unspoken meanings that may  attach themselves to your words as they go out into the world.

It means that I question my assumptions, that I take a critical look at the beliefs and biases beneath my questions. What do I really know? How do I know it? Have I considered other ways of knowing? All those questions I must ask of myself before I frame my questions for you.

Standing in inquiry means that I refuse to take it all too seriously. Questions are about play, about dancing with an idea, looking for its ticklish spots. Generative  questions are posed with a smile and an open hand–an invitation to come outside and play.

So you see, standing in inquiry is not really about standing at all. It’s about living and breathing and moving forward, hand-in-hand and step-by-step–using our questions to clear the path as we move into the next moment, and the next, and the next.

And standing in inquiry means that I continue to be curious about what it will mean to stand in inquiry tomorrow.

–Leslie Patterson, August 27, 2011